From: sartesian
Now this last distinction is key for Brenner, for Brenner is last, first, and foremost examining, analyzing, the conditions of labor, the social relations of property that encapsulate labor and either advance or inhibit its productivity.
Charles Brown wrote:
In this process, labor is evolving into variable capital. The more money made from the colonies, the more money capital to invest in emerging variable capital in England through M-C-M(2). The investment of the money in emerging variable capital also is one of the causes of that labor evolving into fullblown variable capital. The pristine proletarian movement into the cities was financed in part by money made in the colonies. So, the activities in the colonies are part of the cause of the original creation wage-labor/capital relations _in England_.
One of Adam Smith's contributions was to get people away from putting too much emphasis on the role of money.[*] He was right. The fact is that while money plays a big role in the short-term dynamics of capitalism (as Keynes pointed out), over the long haul it's not very important at all. If there is a small amount of money (here, gold) in circulation relative to the need, it has a high purchasing power -- and methods of using credit instead of money are developed and extended. That is, both M and M(2) can involve very small amounts of gold. What's important to the capitalist is the difference between M(2) and M -- and its power to purchase goods and services, along with more labor-power and other resources. CB:
Otherwise, why would they spend so much on the colonies ?
saying that England as a whole -- or Europe as a whole -- benefited from spending on the colonies does not explain why they spent so much on the colonies. After all, the English state at the time did not represent the country as a whole, the capitalists as a class, or even the "rich and powerful" (not only capitalists but traditional lords) as a group. These groups all involved conflicting interests and shifting coalitions. The state represented the most powerful group, centered on the Crown (except during the English Civil War, 1642-51). The state -- or rather, the Crown -- made decisions that benefited itself, its allies, and groups that could put political pressure on it. These groups often did not know what was good for them as a group, just as capitalists today do not know all of their class interests (beyond the basics of protection of their property). So why did they spend so much on the colonies? First, it was because some people had enough resources to convince the Crown to allow or to subsidize their invasion of the New World -- or because they were able to circumvent the Crown's restrictions (and those of the other colonial powers). Second, they saw some gain for themselves in colonization, either gold and other benefits of looting, "free" land stolen from the natives, along with such things as freedom from the Crown's religion (and the ability to impose their own religion). There were also severe class antagonisms that the Crown had to respond to. That is one reason for the colonization of the "New" World is similar to that of the Frontier in the US, as a way that a country can handle internal conflicts. Fights between "freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman" and later between capitalist and proletarian, could be moderated if there was someplace for the oppressed to go to escape oppression. Inmates (and potential inmates) of debtors prisons went to Georgia, for example. The native population kindly let us Europeans have this safety-valve. ;-) [*] The neoclassicals took this too far, to (try to) take it out of economics, except in determining the average price level. That's another story. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
